20111124

I’ve recently had a bit of a chance to play around with Maltšɛ́gj in a “conlang” group on Facebook, which hasn’t led to much more than my reviewing some of the finer points of grammar and the creation of the word “djɛ́lyš” (coffee), but I have been considering a slight grammatical shift that could be quite interesting regarding the “free stress” of the language.

It seems that I, perhaps unconsciously, created most verbs with final stress. It’s not exactly a new concept, especially for English, but I think I would like to implement a “verbs have final stress, nouns/adjectives have primary stress” rule, along the same lines as English verbs borrowed from French or Latin, like présent/presént, cóntract/contráct, &c.

So in other words, leaving us with pairs like ðrɛ́pnid (permission) and ðrɛpníd (to be allowed, may); glácsi (memory) and glacsí (to remember); or bjóxɛf (full, complete) and bjoxɛ́f (to fill, to fulfill, to complete).

This would, of course, entail revising the lexicon quite extensively, and maybe modifying some verbs, but it’s just something I’m thinking about at the moment.